18Mar 2021 by Post

A Flea Circus of Small Animal Acrobats

animals, BBC, Cosmos (series), crustaceans, Current Biology, Darwinian theory, dragonflies, flea circus, Harikumar Suwa, Imperial College London, Intelligent Design, Italy, North Carolina, roundworms, Sandeep Eswarappa, spiders, tardigrades, The Conversation, The Scientist, University of Trento, UV light, water bears
Small animals amuse and amaze scientists who take a close look at them in action. Sometimes it requires a high-speed camera to analyze the trick. Source
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01Jan 2021 by Post

Happy New Year! #1 Story of 2020: Biology Journal Demands Government Censorship of ID

Andrew Moore, BioEssays, CDC, censorship, COVID-19, Dave Speijer, democracy, Dennis Prager, Discovery Institute, Evolution News, Facebook, Federal Government, free speech, Intelligent Design, Internet, Iran, Italy, Karl Popper, Paul Nelson, regulation, schools, search engines, Social media, South Korea, Thomas Paine, University of Amsterdam, vaccine, White House
What if major technology companies shy from censorship? Then the government should take aggressive action: “Make them.” Source
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14Jun 2020 by Post

Weekend Reading: Heretics and Inquisitors

BioEssays, censorship, creationism, crime, Culture, Darwinists, Douglas Axe, establishment, Evolution News, free speech, Günter Bechly, Heresy, history, Inquisition, Intelligent Design, Italy, Middle Ages, mystery, novels, Politics, Richard Sternberg, The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco, William of Baskerville
Years ago, reading Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose, I got bogged down early on and stopped. Rereading it now, I can’t imagine what I found boring. It’s great! A learned crime-mystery about murders in a 14th-century Italian abbey, it deals in part with the relationship between heretics and inquisitors. What Eco relates (via his protagonist William of Baskerville) has a lot of contemporary relevance. Intelligent design is a heresy against the backdrop of conformist evolutionary thinking, and ID proponents must ever beware of Darwinist inquisitors. (See the recent threat of censorship from the biology journal BioEssays.) Eco observes that inquisitions generate heretics, rather than stamping them out. That is true. Many of the leading ID scientists (Axe, Sternberg, Bechly, and others) came to us because they were…
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20May 2020 by Post

The COVID Crisis and Our Healthcare System

borders, boroughs of New York, China, COVID-19, elderly people, Europe, experts, government planners, healthcare, Iran, Italy, Manhattan, mass transit, Medicine, mortality, New York City, nursing homes, officials, pandemic, patients, prisons, Queens, socialism, Staten Island, statism, United States, Venezuela, Wuhan, xenophobia
An essay by a pair of economists in Foreign Policy magazine pins the blame for our pandemic crisis on deficiencies in our health care system. It recommends a variety of interventions, each of which (predictably) entails more government control of health care by experts like… the authors of the essay. To see the COVID response as signifying a failure of the healthcare system is an insult to the brave and skilled people who responded so effectively to this virus, including colleagues at my own hospital on New York’s corona frontline. The authors, and others who think similarly, misunderstand the roots of the crisis and misunderstand the role the health care system has played. More importantly, they misunderstand the role of statism in generating this pandemic.  Retooled Overnight Given the unexpected…
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12Feb 2020 by Post

Say Happy Birthday to Charles Darwin

American Humanist Association, apostles, Austria, birthday gift, Brazil, Charles Darwin, Darwin Day, David Gelernter, Debating Darwin's Doubt, digital download, Evolution, Facebook, Foresight (book), Intelligent Design, Israel, Italy, Marcos Eberlin, Nobel Prize, scholars, scientists, South America, Yale University
Today, February 12, is Charles Darwin’s birthday. For the past two decades, secularists and atheists have celebrated “Darwin Day” almost like a religious holiday. Tonight, for example, the American Humanist Association will hold an event where they promise you can “Discover how Darwin’s apostles… launched a campaign for truth.” I’m not kidding — they really do refer to “Darwin’s apostles”! Meanwhile, the official Facebook page for Darwin Day posts statements like this: “Using scientific logic, we can be as sure of God’s nonexistence as we are of the nonexistence of the aether, phlogiston or werewolves!” The Cult of Darwin While some continue to worship in the cult of Darwin, here is some good news in time for Darwin’s birthday: The number of prominent scientists around the world who are leaving Darwin behind…
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23Jan 2020 by Post

“World Happiness Report” Focuses on…Government

Canada, creator, Culture & Ethics, Czech Republic, Declaration of Independence, Denmark, faith, Finland, France, Gallup World Poll, GDP per capita, happiness, happiness inequality, Iceland, Israel, Italy, life expectancy, life satisfaction, meaningful life, Norway, Pilate, pro-social behavior, religion, Spain, suicide, technocrats, United States, World Happiness Report
The annual “World Happiness Report” for 2019 is out. Depending on the Gallup World Poll, it turns out the U.S. comes in rather low among free countries at number 19. The Declaration of Independence states that all of us are “endowed” by our Creator with “inalienable rights,” among which is “the pursuit of happiness.” The idea, of course, is that finding happiness is the responsibility of the individual and that government may not unduly interfere with that quest. The Technocrats Speak But according to the study’s technocratic authors, government is the prime creator of happiness. Indeed, the first topic mentioned in the report is “happiness and government,” which are the subjects of the first two chapters. In Chapter 2 they write: At the most basic level, good government establishes and…
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